Refugees fleeing conflict in Ukraine arrive at the Medyka border crossing in Poland, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. The U.N. has estimated the conflict could produce as many as 4 million refugees, depending how long the invasion continues.
Maria Pavlushko, 24, an information technology project manager from Zhytomyr, a city around 100 kilometers west of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, said she had been on a skiing holiday in the Carpathian mountains when she got word from home last week that Russia’s invasion had begun.Pavlushko plans to travel from Hungary to Poland, where her mother lives.
Students gather around camp fire to warm themself at the Medyka border crossing after fleeing from the Ukraine, in Poland, Monday, Feb. 28, 2022. The head of the United Nations refugee agency says more than a half a million people had fled Ukraine since Russia's invasion on Thursday. “The situation was very terrible. You had to run because explosions here and there every minute, run to the bunker,” she said.
Otoman Adel Abid, a student from Iraq, fled to Poland from the western city of Lviv after he said panic broke out among many in the city. Most of those fleeing Ukraine were entering the EU from its eastern flank, with some traveling on to countries further west.